The present invention relates to a plastic container and in particular a plastic container for storing beverages. Plastic bottles, such as PET bottles for example, have recently proved to be increasingly more popular on the market than glass bottles. During the production of these bottles, so-called preforms are heated and are expanded within a mould, for example using air pressure.
In order to be able to treat the individual containers or preforms, in the prior art these have a collar which is usually circumferential. This collar is used in order to be able to grip the container for example by means of a gripping arm and to transfer it to another gripping arm. In general therefore, this collar, which will hereinafter also be referred to as the carrying ring, is used for handling the bottle. Usually a handover takes place from one clamp which grips the container to the next clamp, wherein one clamp grips below this carrying ring and one clamp grips above this carrying ring between the carrying ring and a securing ring which is usually arranged above the carrying ring. This securing ring is designed to be much smaller than the carrying ring and also to use less material.
This carrying ring, which is usually also visible even on the finished product, thus serves exclusively for the process of manufacturing the containers/the product. On the other hand, this carrying ring also requires a considerable quantity of plastic material. Care must be taken to ensure that a preform remains unstretched in the region in which this carrying ring is arranged and thus a large quantity of material remains in the carrying ring. The object of the present invention is therefore to provide a container which allows a greater saving in terms of material and in particular to provide a container which does not require the aforementioned carrying ring.
At the same time, however, the intention is also to prevent a clamp from engaging directly in the thread of the containers in order to produce these containers, since this thread might otherwise be destroyed or else a correct fit of the gripping clamps might not be ensured.